God’s Timing

Yesterday, as I leisurely watched my kiddos splash & play in the local swimming hole- my phone rang.

It was our agency.

My heart stopped and I held my breath.

It had been exactly a week since they had confirmed receipt of our dossier. A friend, who is several steps ahead of us with her family’s China adoption through the same agency, had told me that we would likely receive our referral [child match] within a week of our dossier’s arrival at the agency office.

With bated breath and a racing heart, I choked out a greeting, thinking: “This is it… we’re about to find out who our new daughter is.” Cleansing breaths…

“We’re sending back your dossier.”

Como say what?!

Turns out, we goofed some things. Our physician’s examinations expired (must be no more than 6 months old upon receipt, ours are now at 6 months + one week). We missed a couple of notarizations. The entire phone book worth of paperwork must be sent to the Chinese Embassy for authentication. (We had understood the agency completed this step.) They requested five more “lifestyle photos” of our family for China.  (Perhaps the two wine tasting photos didn’t portray us in the best light as prospective parents? Ironically, those two shots were snapped during the ten year stretch during which I abstained from alcohol. Oh well.)

Speaking of the photos, any clue what a challenge it is to find five photos of our entire family of four that also includes other people? And without sunglasses?? Hubs or I are generally the ones snapping such photos, and on the rare occasion that we HAVE bothered a random passerby to capture a moment we are typically outdoors, shielding our sensitive baby blues behind over-sized shades.

Confession: We may have staged a few photos with our dear friends at our dinner party last night, complete with t-shirt changes. 🙂

We’re frustrated. We thought this was it. We’re ready to be done with paperwork. We are weary.

But, we are trusting in God’s timing. He is sovereign. He has a plan. He already knows who our new daughter is. And she is worth it.

Perhaps she isn’t born yet? Or isn’t yet in “the system”? For whatever reason, we are still waiting. Perhaps some day we will have hindsight on that.

A fellow adoptive mom has confessed to me that as her family was compiling paperwork, she occasionally felt an unexplained nudge to pay the hefty additional fees to overnight envelopes to their destination. Later, she realized that had she not done this she would have likely missed some unforeseen deadlines with their DRC adoption which would have delayed their travel to bring their son home by months. Knowing how gravely ill he had been in a third world country hospital, she shudders in realization that such delays could have cost him his life.

Another adoptive mom looked back through her family camera after learning her new daughter’s birthday and was able to see what they were doing the day she was born. How amazing it that?!

God created the universe, and everything in it- including time. As the inventor of time, He is sovereign over it- not bound within it’s metes. I picture Him flipping through history the way we peruse, back and forth, through the pages of a book. I trust He is intricately weaving all of the numerous details of our lives in Montana, our daughter’s life in China, and even paperwork delays, together so that we are matched with the child that He has already selected to join our family.

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.” Romans 8:28 (NLT)


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